“Irhan Govi wrote a poem about Proxies during the last decade ——that some have are already calling the Frantic Forties. In that verse, he mentions possibility of our great defenders falling. But, did he have it right? I look at a population that is so used to war, so used to living in the arcologies, that I wonder that the realisation of peace might just shatter us. What would we even do under a blue sky?” - Hannah Lazo, World-Premier 2037-2041

_____________________________________________________________

2090

Arcology Premier Simone Saro entered her office at a time that might generously be called late; not that anyone would, her being the boss and all.

She strode through the office patterned with grey granite and hexagons of gold - a decor chosen by one of her male predecessor, later found guilty of rape - and sat down at a desk made of transparent synth.

The desk shimmered as she sat down, taking on the hue of an overcast sky, lightning webbed across its surface. One reporter had said that it granted her the appearance of a Norse demigod, and well, the approval rates had soared following that particular op-ed.

So, the tacky desk stayed.

She leaned back, speaking for all intents and purposes to thin air. “Fermentation?”

“YES, SIMONE?”

The Administrator of Oulu Arcology had a pleasant voice, one that brought to mind female opera singers. In her first term, she had referred to it as female.

An Administrator might not shout their displeasure, but their silence spoke volumes. It had forced her to maintain her schedule for three weeks - no small thing for an newly elected leader of an entire arcology, and Simone had made a point of getting it right.

“Please tell me that nothing is burning, that none of the junior Proxies have started a fight with a Russian diplomat or that the saunas are malfunctioning.”

There was the faintest of hesitation, one that a normal human might not have noticed. But Simone was on her 7th year as Premier of Oulu. By now she could probably hold an introduction-course in Type III sentience anthropology. Oulu Arcology wasn’t governed by one of the older artificial consciousnesses - who could and would lie - but the plain fact was that an Administrator, even one as young as Fermentation, could outthink a human being.

That it had chosen not to…

“Tell me.”

She palmed a cigarr, lit it with a practised drag and soon wheels of white were puffed away within the confines of the office. One of the benefits of having non-corporeal secretaries; nobody around to complain about the smoke. The voters might be fine with her having a wife, but smoking? In 2090?

“Are you familiar with Crusted Flake?”

Another drag.

Come to tell, the name was slightly familiar. Sylvesteri Hekkenninen…a still planet…seven rivers and a white forest…

“Crusted Flake. Isn’t that the installation of alien Field technology found by one of the Travelogues? Allegedly, that is.”

Unsaid went the fact that the…city, outpost had been shielded, and that when the scientists and the artificial consciousnesses broke through, they had been unable to decipher their finding!

She shook her head.

All that time, money and Field-Shards spent on a project that in the end had been useless. It took them two years to break through the shield. An alien city, powered by Fields. They had expected to find…something. The High Command of the Arcologies were hoping for a weapon to end the war; the scientist were hoping for a graal of a sort and the politicians had been hoping for a victory to tie their horses to.

Each had been disappointed, for their own reasons. An alien city, powered by light-based technology that couldn’t be deciphered, not even when the data was brought back to Administrators. Oh, it was a wondrous thing, the pillars, the fluted bridges, the tall towers- the thresholds of which suggested a race of giants - and it would be quite the thing for some artist to depict.

But no insight into the Host. No artefact to build better Chassis. No secrets whispered of the defeat of a Sovereign. Just…and it broke her heart to say it. Just a city.

“Very much so,” Fermentation said.”There have been developments.”

That sounded ominous. When a Administrator spoke of developments, they all too often spoke about changes. And changes were the death knell of her politics. Why couldn’t everything just remain as it were? ”Developments?”

“It is better to show you.” The Administrator paused.”I would suggest that you extinguish that. You will need it.”

She did as they bid. Simone knew the routine; she leaned back in her high-backed chair and made herself comfortable.

“Now then…”

______

There is a forest, neatly delineated by seven rivers. Great boughs rise from the land. Beneath green awnings wildlife teem. Squirrels, fat and black, steal eggs from mighty rocs. Boars scuffle with cats that have never evolved on a earth-sphere. Ants erect edifices to their stentorian queens. Sunlight glint.

There is a fire. The bodies of ants blacken. Their queen flees. The rocs take to the sky in a flight to blot out the sky. The boars herd their young out and beyond. The squirrels leap - tree to tree - their chatter betraying worry. The trees turn charcoal-black and eventually bone-white.

A wasteland.

The wind brings seeds. There is a growth that spreads across the land, a viridian matress. Sentinels in wood rise. The birds land, their ancestral home restored. The squirrels start another round of petty larceny. The boars grind their hide-covered backsides against the rough bark of the trees. The wind whispers in the backgroud.

There is a forest. There is a fire - there is always a fire. But the forest continues, because, there is always a forest. This is life. Death and rebirth.

Then.

Then, then, then, then, then, then.

One day, a worm crawls up from the antediluvian dark. It hides beneath the roots of a tree. There it creates a nest. The limber creature entraps an unwary piglet, spiriting it away to the nest. Fed, it divides itself. Two worms.

A roc lands on ground, intent on taking an older boar - easy prey. The two worms steal away from the soil, dragging with them the corpse. A third sibling joins them.

At first all is well. The cycle of life continues in the forest. But all is not well in Denmark. The writing is on the wall, or perhaps, found beneath layers of soil.

It begins with the thinning of boar herds. A sentinel of the forest collapses, eaten from the inside. The forest knows. No carrion, these, but the vanguard of a hostile enemy. The war begins. It is thought that this is yet another stage in the eternal cycle.

It is not until parts of the forest have died a true death - mildew earth from where no young sapling will rise - that the truth becomes apparent. This is the slow death. Extinction.

The boars force their way into the nests of the worms, never knowing that have encountered a hollow trap. The rocs survey the sky, scouting, but the worms know. They hide inside the trees they have hollowed out. There are no more squirrels. They were the first to go.

The forest shakes, the roots of the boughs trembling. Something has to be done. As it is now, this war will not be won. They will lose. They will be extinguished.

At first it’s pollen. Pink and black, poisonous. The worms die in their underhills and parts of the forest long gone can be reclaimed. The next time the poisonous pollen is used, the worms have adapted.

There is fire then, the natural weapon of the forest. Only this time there will be no regrowing. No new boughs. No undergrowth. If the worms need sustenance in the form of wildlife and trees, then the forest will leave nothing for the creatures.

On it goes. Each weapon, each effort leaves the land sere and changed. In time there are still seven rivers, but their contents have been changed until it is no water that flows through the channels. The trees have become white stunted things. This is the Truth of the Forest. To fight the Enemy, you need to change yourself——

The world rippled, becoming a wide plaza surrounded by a mulitude of pillars. Simone Saro found herself standing on a material like glass, filled with opaque bubbles. The sudden transition was jarring - all the more because Simone suspected that the vision had been created with endoaurics.

She had felt the forest dying, its exhortation to change still burning within her.

“Beautiful, yes?”

She glanced up, startled. A man in white overalls and a shaved head stood standing with his back to her.

“Certainly,” she tried, trying to find her old poise.

“HE CAN’T HEAR YOU,” Fermentation said, its body that of a fluid boiling.

The man swept a hand around the plaza, the vast towers of a milky material, each built to the proportions of giants. The reports hadn’t exaggerated: were she to enter on one, she’d have to jump over to reach the door lining. This was Crusted Flake.

“MERELY A SIMULATION.”

“…as I was saying, the Lightbringers knew how to build an structures that lasted for eternity. The older structures of this setttlement might be 20 000 years old. A clever synthetic, not properly synth as we understood it, but remaining all the while.”

The man scratched with a brown hand against thinning hairline. Nervously so. “Ah, I’m digressing.”

Limpet eyes stared met hers.

“By the time you get this a month will have gone by. But to be perfectly honest- I, or we - cracked the code in 88’.”

The man walked up to one of the aforementioned pillars, and his change of location brought Simone and Fermentation with them, forcibly so.

The pillar, three times as tall as herself, began to shine. Great spots of light, green, red, blue strobed in a pattern.

“This is what took so long time. All the colors of the spectrum. The Administrators back on Earth and the artificial consciousnesses gathered here tried everything. Logic gates, ciphers, random sequencing and at one time they even tried astrology.”

This she knew. The expense of sending vessels through two gates to the end of the Solar System. Then, a vast journey through the dark of space. Food, personnel, the technology for the consciousnesses that needed it. Incurring that expense for another decade was not something to be born - not without results.

“The light was just…the prelude.”

The man turned, tapping his head. “The second part of the puzzle required an Implant and a forerunner. But no,” he said, picking up the pace, his voice energetic,”not just any forerunner.”

He placed one thumb on the pillar. It shone green in the visual spectrum and a feeling came onto Simone Saro. A rush, pupils widened and she felt strangely buoyed. For some reason she thought of spring.

“The Lightbringers used a visual system with lights to communicate, hence the name. But!”

The pillar lit up with all the colours of the rainbow and a chorus of sensations filled her. Anger, sorrow, excitement, envy.

“The second part is emotions. We suspect they were mildly empathic before they began to develop their own version of endoaurics. That was the part that stumped us for so long. That, and the fact that only forerunners with a focus on light and emotions - not exactly the most common combinations - could understand them.”

The man continued.”That vision I showed you, it’s not properly how they communicated, for the Lightbringer's communication was subjective! Each of us who translated it has experienced different themes and imagery, because to us, those sensations meant different things!”

Simone raised a hand.

The recording stopped.

“Fermentation,” she said. This was no small discovery. Presenting it at the right time might just avail her to the support she’d need as her numbers fell. An alien culture. One with Field technology even.

But, there was a but.

“YES?”

“This is momentous news, but I fail to understand exactly why the vision was so important.”

The seething, bubbling smudge nodded.”SEE THIS.”

The recording sped up, blurring into quicksilver, resolving only as they stood in a office.

“…the gist of the vision as I showed you is this. The Lightbringers changed themselves. There are other visions, other messages forwarded in this cube, but the most important is this: they were losing their war against the Host.”

He paused. Lips, trembling.”The first change, as we compared our ideas here at Crusted Flake, was the empathy. But not the last one. The theme can be found in all of the messages they left us. That was the final message in the installation. Change, the Lightbringers urged us, or die.”

He swallowed.

“I guess they didn’t change enough.”

_____

A conversation, then.

“Have you seen that report out of Crusted Flake?”

“Suggestive,” came the reply.

The first speaker sat back in a chair.

“Not just that. This——,“ the the speaker breathed.”When we unveil the Chepri Solution at large to the world, we will have precedent.”

“An alien one,” the rebuttal went. But second speaker’s voice wasn’t in it.

The first speaker, a woman, continued.”Which makes it even better! That a civilisation, one that has never had contact with ours came up with the same answer, it boggles the mind.”

“I have already started a draft for the communications department. We couldn’t even begin to create an opportunity like this,” the first speaker drawled, a hand on a screen.

“I look forward to seeing it. But that’s not why I wanted to have this meeting. One of the sub-routines have picked up news on our Scarabs. One in Siberia, a boy that has managed to find a Chassis. Another, living in a Swedish provincial camp, whose health-exam has triggered the criterion for induction to a Tutelage.”

The first speaker, being too occupied with the news, merely waved. In the light that came through the window, the pale limb could be made out. A thick ring of scars braided a hand.

“Let the Siberian be; create a trail that will make sure that the records on the Swede end up at the Bureau of Administration at one point, though regrettably low priority…”

The first speaker continued writing on her draft. She had more important things to do. And so Martin Soleri and Viktor Solzhenitsyn continued on the journey toward the Vänern Arcology.